Conventional error correction techniques in an optical disk system, e.g., a DVD system, often consume too much bandwidth of a memory device in order to correct errors identified in a data block. On the other hand, in order to reduce the system's manufacturing cost, the memory often needs to play more than one role simultaneously, e.g., video buffer and screen display buffer, each demanding a certain amount of bandwidth. As a result, there may be insufficient bandwidth resources left for performing all the error corrections required to correct a corrupted, but correctable data block. Even though it is possible to solve this problem by having an error correction decoder with a large on chip (built-in) memory, this solution inevitably drives up the cost of the optical disk system. Therefore, it is desirable to develop a new strategy that reduces the bandwidth requirement of error correction without significantly increasing the system's cost.